This talk is dedicated to Sara Ritter, dear friend and fellow M.F.A. Graduate who prepared a celebration dinner following it with our dear Pacific poets friends: Rita Tiwari, Chopsy Gutowski and Sydnie Binder. Sara passed away unexpectedly just a few weeks later.
The italicized line in my elegy for Sara is from her poem “Easter.”
February Elegy for Sara
If there is a right
action of the throat,
it is to say: I tried.
I stayed a long time there.
—Joanna Klink
A lifetime may not be long
enough. A town
by the ocean where
I last saw my friend.
Foam a low hum
carried on the waves
and the moon half-sunk,
shimmering an instant
like a bright bell.
Not the embers of the day
but its unimagined
beginning, pale lemon sun
licking ice from the sand
as though wishing for summer.
But first, the wet pilgrimage
of spring. And my friend,
who’d feed us
steaming bowls of chili
again, if she could. Who’d ask
a question and listen hard for
what’s beyond the worn-out words.
Who’d stay a long time there,
to hear what catches
in the throat.
Maria Surricchio: Poetry 